


Trust

by hibernate



Category: Legend of the Seeker (TV)
Genre: Breathplay, Dubious Consent, F/F, Fisting, Mord'Sith Content, Power Dynamics, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-25
Updated: 2020-06-25
Packaged: 2021-03-04 03:54:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,092
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24917173
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hibernate/pseuds/hibernate
Summary: Dahlia, before Eternity. Mord-Sith do not hide from who they are, or the things that bring them power.
Relationships: Dahlia/Garen (Legend of the Seeker)
Comments: 1
Kudos: 10





	Trust

**Author's Note:**

> Polished & edited repost. This was originally written for one of the Seeker kink memes a long, long time ago and I didn't want it lost in the darkest depths of LJ. Rarepair representation! (Please note the tags.)

The first time Garen touches her, it is to establish boundaries.

It has only been a handful of days since Dahlia arrived at the Temple of Jandrolin, in body if not in spirit. Perhaps if she did not leave her heart in the People's Palace, she would have noticed earlier the way Garen looked at her, scorn and arrogance.

"Do you believe yourself to be more than me," Garen hisses in her ear, pushing her against the wall, "because you served at the People's Palace?"

"No, Mistress," Dahlia says, making herself soft in all the ways Garen is hard.

Every temple has an order and a hierarchy, the rules of which are inscribed like scars into the skin of every Mord-Sith who enters one, by the force of the agiel, or other, equally intimate, measures. Power comes in more than one shape.

Dahlia exhales, determined not to voice her pleasure, even as Garen puts her thigh behind her hand, fingers angling forward as her thrusts turns forceful.

It is familiar, the force and the anger, and though Garen means to intimidate, the effect on Dahlia is the opposite. She is crumbling, falling apart, seized by orgasm, and meanwhile the only thing in her mind is _Cara, Cara, Cara_.

*

Power comes in more than one shape. Garen is strong and ambitious; she has accomplished much but she still wears the doubts of her own control on her sleeve, for anyone to see. Or perhaps only Dahlia does, trained since childhood to see the same in someone else. 

When the news of Lord Rahl reach their temple, Garen pushes her down onto her knees, and Dahlia comforts her in the best way she knows. She, too, takes solace in the sounds Garen makes, and the taste of her sex.

The hand that wraps around her neck is still covered by leather, and Dahlia has never felt more like a Mord-Sith: pain and pleasure, violence and sex, leather and skin. Garen's fingers push down hard, palm pressing tightly at an angle they are both familiar with, and Dahlia sinks into it, dizzy and light-headed.

Deprived of air, everything else ceases to be. There is only this: Garen, the pain in her lungs, Garen, the throbbing between her legs, _Garen_. Flattening her tongue against Garen's clit, pressing to match the indelible imprint of her fingers, Dahlia feels her tremble.

Eventually, the real world returns, and with it, the truths that cannot be denied.

Lord Rahl is dead, and Cara is gone.

But their agiels have not lost their power, and they all know what it means. Another Rahl still lives, or more than one, perhaps. Dahlia is unlikely to forget one of them, having felt him move under her hands before he was born.

"Darken Rahl was a man who enjoyed the company of women," she tells Garen, a quiet whisper while her hands work on the laces at Garen's back. "Such things do occasionally result in children."

"It takes more than a name to be Lord Rahl," Garen replies, voice full of contempt.

"But a child can be shaped to be what we wish of him."

Garen tilts her head, then, glancing over her shoulder. "You know of a child with Rahl blood."

It is a command rather than a question.

Mord-Sith do not often bother lying, but Dahlia has discovered it to be a skill she excels at. Power comes in more than one shape. She could lie now, and Garen would not know. But her throat is sore, and under her neck-guard, the blooming bruises spell only one thing.

*

_Trust_. 

Garen tucks her fingers together, sliding them inside Dahlia, past the knuckles, and then a little more. It is far slower and gentler than Garen's usual preference and the intimacy is as pleasurable as it is frustrating. Garen does not usually demonstrate such patience, and Dahlia finds herself almost — _charmed_.

They are in yet another Mord-Sith Temple, and Lord Rahl has granted Garen the power she craves. She is practically giddy, for a Mord-Sith, pride obvious in the way she holds herself, in the jut of her chin.

The pressure of her hand inside of Dahlia straddles the line of pain, a delicate balance that she has never been able to get enough of. It builds, at the speed Garen allows with a rhythm so precise that Dahlia would think her unaffected, if she did not know better. 

Dahlia cannot hold her whimpers back, not during this, and Garen grins victoriously — a sudden flash of childish vanity that makes her look oddly sweet. It's irresistible, drawing her in, and she's pulsing around Garen's hand, back arching, making sounds she cannot control.

*

Later, they lie naked in Garen's bed in a rare moment of stillness. With Darken Rahl back among the living, there is little time for rest. 

"Lord Rahl has a mission for you," Garen says, and her face would be hard and unreadable to anyone else, but Dahlia knows to look deeper, in the small strain around her eyes, the little twitch in the corner of her mouth. "He believes you to be the key to acquiring the Stone of Tears, and making the Mord-Sith that travels with the Seeker remember where her true loyalties lie."

"Why would he believe such a thing?" Dahlia asks, quietly, even though she already knows.

"Because I told him."

Dahlia meets Garen's eyes, and there is no room for regret. They are Mord-Sith, they do not hide or recoil from who and what they are, and it was always going to come to this. They both crave something that cannot be easily satisfied.

"The child she bore to Lord Rahl is dead," Garen continues, mouth curving into a haughty sneer. "But a lie about his whereabouts may convince her to go with you, back to a Temple, where she can be suitably retrained."

The loss of a child she only glimpsed as he was taken away should not pain her so much, but Dahlia has always been able to picture him clearly: the power of a Rahl in a child that would otherwise have been all Cara. He held her heart before he took his first breath, and perhaps the most painful thing of all is that Dahlia knows, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that if it brings Cara back to where she belongs, back to her, it is worth the child's death and more.

Mord-Sith do not hide from who they are, or the things that bring them power. 

Dahlia is skilled at lying.


End file.
